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As a generalization, Europe still has a tendency to focus on quantity over quality. There is still a strong tendency to view engineering skill and culture as un

As a generalization, Europe still has a tendency to focus on quantity over quality. There is still a strong tendency to view engineering skill and culture as undifferentiated. Factory workers. Few people working in West Coast tech believes that, and hires accordingly. In the traditional West Coast tech market, engineers are modeled more as elite athletes who are members of a sports team. You can't replace Lionel Messi with a bunch of scrubs from the local pub. Having elite talent in key roles can make or break your company/project. Anecdotally, this tends to be true in practice too. Ambitious companies will pay almost anything to have elite engineers in every position of their team if they can make it happen. Being cheap doesn't matter if you never win.

franciscop 5y ago
Funny that you say that Europe hires based on quantity and then you put an example (Lionel Messi) of a European football player*. I don't believe that's true. We also have our "rockstars" in Europe that we know are nigh unreplaceable, from Santiago Calatrava (architect), soccer players as you said, etc. in modern times to all of the classic artists and architects which are known by name. I think one big difference is that technology came a decade or more later to e.g. Spain, so there's still a strong generational difference where older hiring people do not see a big difference from a "kid" fixing their computer/phone or making a website, and don't see the value so much. Add all of the other related things, like even if they saw it valuable there's little related infra, specific knowledge, etc. *weeell technically Argentinian but the high of his career was in Spain
native_samples 5y ago
I would say the factory worker mentality is actually an "everywhere but west coast US tech firms". I worked for a while for a few New Yorkers and they had exactly the same mentality, but they came from finance. "Ambitious companies will pay almost anything to have elite engineers in every position of their team ... Being cheap doesn't matter if you never win" This mentality and most of the wage inflation is down to extremely loose VC markets that are almost entirely focused on software, not something actually inherent to the USA or the job market. There are huge numbers of firms and industries which are not winner takes all, and in which price does matter. Being cheap can in fact matter if the market you're in simply doesn't have a single winner and lots of losers. VCs generally aren't interested in such businesses however, because they only care about businesses that could potentially have absurd levels of return, which in practice means they select firms that make promises of entirely dominating their chosen area. But that's really hard to do through skill alone, hence the proliferation of companies that simply attempt to buy the entire market using nothing but VC money (see: Uber).
- gedy 5y ago
  > I worked for a while for a few New Yorkers and they had exactly the same mentality, but they came from finance. Same here, left a role with a NYC company for this reason. Was a big culture shock for me coming from West coast companies.

franciscop 5y ago

Funny that you say that Europe hires based on quantity and then you put an example (Lionel Messi) of a European football player*. I don't believe that's true. We also have our "rockstars" in Europe that we know are nigh unreplaceable, from Santiago Calatrava (architect), soccer players as you said, etc. in modern times to all of the classic artists and architects which are known by name. I think one big difference is that technology came a decade or more later to e.g. Spain, so there's still a strong generational difference where older hiring people do not see a big difference from a "kid" fixing their computer/phone or making a website, and don't see the value so much. Add all of the other related things, like even if they saw it valuable there's little related infra, specific knowledge, etc. *weeell technically Argentinian but the high of his career was in Spain

native_samples 5y ago

I would say the factory worker mentality is actually an "everywhere but west coast US tech firms". I worked for a while for a few New Yorkers and they had exactly the same mentality, but they came from finance. "Ambitious companies will pay almost anything to have elite engineers in every position of their team ... Being cheap doesn't matter if you never win" This mentality and most of the wage inflation is down to extremely loose VC markets that are almost entirely focused on software, not something actually inherent to the USA or the job market. There are huge numbers of firms and industries which are not winner takes all, and in which price does matter. Being cheap can in fact matter if the market you're in simply doesn't have a single winner and lots of losers. VCs generally aren't interested in such businesses however, because they only care about businesses that could potentially have absurd levels of return, which in practice means they select firms that make promises of entirely dominating their chosen area. But that's really hard to do through skill alone, hence the proliferation of companies that simply attempt to buy the entire market using nothing but VC money (see: Uber).

gedy 5y ago
> I worked for a while for a few New Yorkers and they had exactly the same mentality, but they came from finance. Same here, left a role with a NYC company for this reason. Was a big culture shock for me coming from West coast companies.